I still find it amusing that they made that movie from a 5 page short story.
Hey, "2001: A Space Odyssey" was made from a short story ("The Sentinel") that was only about five pages, maybe ten. They threw in a scene from another Clarke story, "Take A Deep Breath". (Guess which scene:-)
(Mind, Clarke is (or was) a SCUBA diver, he should know better. (I.e. exhale, don't hold your breath, or you'll risk an embolism.)
Come to think of it, a lot of SF movies are based on short stories or novelettes, rather than full length novels. Too hard to do justice to the latter in the screen time available. "Dune" should have been a mini-series. (And not done by DeLaurentis).
I can somewhat understand why folks might put more restrictive licensing on documentation than code.
Documentation is easier to screw up -- it doesn't have to pass the objective 'machine test' of whether it will compile and run. And there's an old saying among writers: there is no greater urge than to modify somebody else's prose. Lot's of folks consider themselves writers who aren't. Far fewer consider themselves programmers who aren't, because the computer has a way of slapping you in the face with reality.
That said, however, I agree that there ought to be some way for folks other than the original copyright holder to add to/update documentation as the software changes. I suppose if nothing else the updates could be distributed as a 'patch' (sed script?) to the original, or as an errata sheet, although neither are very satisfactory. Especially after several generations of same.
If you're not already doing this... tape those shows!
We've got hours and hours worth of Sesame St, Bill Nye, Shelly T Turtle, Arthur, Magic Schoolbus, and yes, even some Barney. Our daughter (4-1/2) grew up on that stuff (plus Disney videos and a lot of being read to). Kids love to watch the same videos over and over (and over, and over...) again -- they pick up new things each time, and also gives them a feeling of mastery that they can "predict" what's going to happen next. (It's the same with favorite books.) We also found that, with my daugher anyway, they go through phases. For a few weeks all she watch was Arthur. Then just Magic Schoolbus. And so on. Then she'll rediscover something she hadn't watched in a long time.
My boys (twins, 8 months) aren't quite into any of that stuff yet. We have a couple of 'baby videos' -- music and shapes/toys/etc which help us keep our sanity at times. We do limit how much the kids watch TV, and we hardly watch it ourselves, but it has its uses.
Yes, Discovery, Learning Channel, A&E etc have a lot of good stuff, and we usually watch those in preference to PBS or (ugh) network TV in the evenings (with exceptions).
But for little kids, PBS rules. Sesame Street and stuff like Shelly T. Turtle kept our daughter (and now our boys) educated and entertained without constant commercial interruptions for the latest Mattel marvel or sugar frosted glucose cereal. Now she routinely watches Bill Nye the Science Guy and Magic Schoolbus. Around here the local PBS stations also routinely broadcast more targeted educational stuff in the wee hours of the morning for teachers to tape and use in their classes.
Yeah, the libertarian in me says that shouldn't be paid for by unwilling taxpayers, but the concerned parent says "cool". And I do fork over some bucks come pledge season.
If PBS were to go subscription-only (via cable and satellite) I'd pay for it, but I like the idea that it's available to those that don't have access (for physcial or financial reasons) to cable or satellite - at least the educational kids programming.
Science fiction author Larry Niven, that is. Jerry Pournelle is fond of quoting it, and I've heard Niven himself say it a time or two:
"There is no cause so noble that it will not attract fuggheads."
Linux advocacy proves to be no exception.
Re: [Don't!] Go buy a divx player!
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 2
The boycott is not just for selling a shoddy product -- there are (a very few) non Circuit City stores around here that sold DIVX and I don't particularly avoid them (besides, if I boycotted every store that ever sold a shoddy product I'd never buy anything) -- it's for designing the stupid thing and pushing it on an ignorant populace. Kind of like a large software company up in Redmond, only worse.
Oh, and as for folks looking for a bargain when they sell off DIVX player back stock, keep in mind that no DIVX player sold on or after today will ever play DIVX discs, because you won't be able to register it (see the news release). (Even if you bought one last week, if you haven't registered it yet you're SOL as far as DIVX discs go.) It'll still play DVDs, but poorly.
Re:Could someone tell me why it was bad?
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 2
However, I still think the pricing model is a great idea. No more late fees...
The "great" pricing model just built the usual late fee (and then some) into the initial purchase price of the disc. Unless you're the type that routinely keeps rentals for a couple of weeks past due date, it doesn't win you much. If you usually return rentals on time (easy for me, I drop 'em off on the way to work), it penalizes you.
Around here I can rent two DVD's for a week for what a single DIVX would cost me for 48 hours. Worse than that, if you count mileage to the nearest Circuit City to buy the DIVX.
Re:Could someone tell me why it was bad?
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 2
What DIVX offers is an improved rental model, where your trips to the video store are cut by more than half.
"Cut by more than half"? How do you figure that?
And in any case, it isn't necessarily true. There are far, far more video rental places than Circuit Sh.., er, Cities. When I return a video I just drop it off in the drive past drop-box, and the video store is on my way to work. No special trip involved. And the rental price is typically about half the price of a DIVX disc, which seems to have the late-return fee built in.
(Or I can rent a movie - VHS or DVD - at my local supermarket and return it next week when I'm back for next week's groceries. Only a buck for the tape, and the DVD rental is still cheaper than buying a DIVX.)
Re: [Don't!] Go buy a divx player!
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 2
What were you doing in there supporting Circuit City anyway if you don't like DIVX?
This announcement is great -- I laugh, ha ha! -- but I'm still not planning on shopping at Circuit City. Not until July 1, 2001, anyway...
(As an ex-military associate of mine is fond of saying, "defeat is in the pursuit". Or as an ex-fighter pilot puts it "don't stop firing when you see smoke, follow him down to the ground". We want to make sure DIVX is not just dead, but is buried, with a large wooden stake through its heart and a bundle of garlic around its neck. To remind others who might come up with similar schemes.)
Re:Geeks To Consumers: We Were Right After All
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 2
The significance of this cannot be overlooked. This is empirical proof that any system that places consumer property under the access control of a remote body can, will, and just did repossess control of those goods, despite the (promised!) expectations of the customer.
Does this remind you of anything? Like the provisions in the proposed revision to the Commercial Code (I forget the new acronym) that allows just that with software licensing?
What can we learn from this? SDMI--the MP3 competitor--is flat out doomed to fail if it attempts any sort of protection dependant on contacting anyone anywhere for permission to play a song
Here's hoping that also applies to software that tries to go the rental or time-expired licensing route, as is rumored for upcoming versions of MS Office. (Don't pay the monthly rental, and Word locks up on you. Holding not only your app, but your documents hostage. (You don't actually believe that the default.doc format will be readable by anything else, do you?))
Beta Myths - was Re:Hee Hee Hee
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 2
Beta sure seems more hyped now than it ever was when it was alive.
Yes, the original Beta was slightly (not "a LOT") better than VHS in terms of recording quality (resolution). But how good can you get when you're limited by composite NTSC anyway? VHS won out because (a) it was a more open standard (Beta was closely held by Sony), and (b) you could put a full length movie onto a single tape.
The Beta that is used in TV studios and commercial camcorders these days is Digital Beta. Same tape cassette mechanism but a totally different recording technique, and utterly incompatible with the old Beta tape decks. It's the digital aspect that gives it the higher resolution than the old 3/4" UMatic cassettes they used to use (and are still used somewhat).
Some security considerations, of course -- don't want the users changing the rules of the dungeon too much -- but it'd be cool if they could upload their own Java-based objects/modules/avatars/etc (using GetClassByName or whatever the API is) to alter (within bounds) the behaviour of the environment. This can go far beyond (possibly too far beyond) what any built-in scripting langage might be capable of, and saves you the trouble of writing one.
Problem is, if that gets repeated enough even in jest, people are going to end up believing it.
Hell, it'd probably be horrifying to find out just how many people do believe it now (the ones that don't believe that Bill Gates/Microsoft invented the Internet.)
ONe, it doesn't have to be random noise. Oh, if you're using something as simple as XOR, maybe it does so that the output is non-obvious. But with only a slightly more sophisticated one-time-pad lookup it could be an actual music CD, not just noise. The advantage is lower-obviousness during a physical search. (Mind, if they're really serious and suspect this is the technique you're using, they'll try to decrypt against every CD in your collection.)
And you don't have to start with a new CD for each transmission, unless you're sending 650 MB at a shot. A single CD will cover a lot of message traffic. You just both (all involved) need to agree on which recording of which CD you're going to use.
(The traditional low-tech version of this is using an agreed-upon edition of a mass market book, "Catcher In The Rye", say.)
Hah. The AT&T Unix PC, thirteen years ago, had a built-in phone and telephony software. (There's a copy of the review of it I wrote for BYTE on my web page somewhere.)
The Unix PC had a lot of shortcomings (hey, what do you want for 1M of memory and a 10 MHz 68010?), but the Phone Manager software was actually pretty cool. A lot more could be done with today's technology, of course, especially with Caller-ID and other features not available back in the '80s. (And is being done on large Unix systems supporting customer service operations.)
I mean, if Brin can't be trusted to even get Anakin's age right (9 or 10, not 6), what can we trust him with?
Too many of Brin's comments had to do with Anakin being 6, when he's really 10. That may not seem like much of a difference in Brin's mind, but in the context it is quite significant. And consider that Anakin is quite above average intelligence (more than perhaps we can say for his son), the difference is more significant. A 10 year old with an IQ of 150 has a 'mental age' of 15.
Brin gets a lot of small things wrong too, and leaps to unwarranted assumptions. Young Anakin was friends with young Greedo? What, there's only one alien like that on all of Tatooine? Darth Vader toasts planets? Erm, that was Moff Tarkin that blew up Alderaan, not Vader.
Yes, that Yoda considers Anakin "too old" and yet doesn't put up much of a protest over training Luke was something many of us noticed. But again, consider context: In TPM the Jedi Knights are at their zenith and there are many of them. In ESB (and ROTJ) Luke is the only prospect left. Yoda isn't happy about it but what choices does he have? (As an aside, consider how long Jedi training must take if Obi-Wan started at a younger age than Anakin and is only now (in TPM) considered no longer an apprentice.)
Brin's had some odd ideas before. This review wasn't really worth the disk space.
I read the update. It makes things seem even worse, not better.
Without the clarification, we could at least hope that the MS crap would remain confined to the TV's proprietary JVM, and the open one would remain pretty much conformant to 100% Pure Java.
Now we see that the open version is being seduced to the "purloin and pervert" (embrace+extend) side of the force.
2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). [That's hardly cross-platform, then, is it?] If developers use Delegates [I don't recall those being part of standard Java] they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. [Which we need....why?] We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls. [Oh, joy, more Win32 crAPIs. And they'll work just how on end-swapped or 64-bit word machines?]
The GPL'd Kaffe tree is about to become hopelessly contaminated. Somebody fork it now, please!
I read the update. It makes things seem even worse, not better.
Without the clarification, we could at least hope that the MS crap would remain confined to the TV's proprietary JVM, and the open one would remain pretty much conformant to 100% Pure Java.
Now we see that the open version is being seduced to the "purloin and pervert" (embrace+extend) side of the force.
2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). That's hardly cross-platform, then, is it? If developers use Delegates I don't recall those being part of standard Java they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. Which we need....why? We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls. Oh, joy, more Win32 crAPIs. And they'll work just how on end-swapped or 64-bit word machines?
The GPL'd Kaffe tree is about to become hopelessly contaminated. Somebody fork it now, please!
The Kaffe that's already out there under GPL is available to anyone and will continue so. New versions don't have to be GPL'd, however.
Given the above concerns about Microsoft and Transvirtual, it may be time to fork the tree (or be ready to) and proceed with Open Kaffe (GNU Kaffe? some other name?) independantly of whatever MS/TV do.
An oxymoron. There's no such thing. If it only runs on Windows, then at best it's a "Java-like language". I wonder if the next "Explorer.Worm" targets.kaf (or whatever) files too.
(Although MS will probably stick with the.java extension just to sow chaos and confusion, as part of their usual "purloin and pervert" (uh, "embrace and extend") tactics.)
Yeah. A while back I did some work for a large cable company -- a different sort of e-business, but still an e-business. Their system (customer info, billing, and digital settop box authorization) was based on Sun Enterprise servers, and the whole system was replicated in both Denver and Dallas via a T-3. You could nuke one data center and the overall system would stay up.
Much as I'd like to read the linked-to article, Microsoft's web site seems incapable of serving up a version of it that I can read in Netscape 3.01.
I get one window of text (along with the usual decorations) which is empty if I scroll down, and has vanished if I scroll back up. Fascinating. "View source" shows more JavaScript than actual document text...
No doubt it works just peachy in Internet Exploiter. But MS misses the first point of communication, which is to convey the message. No wonder MS is losing.
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I still find it amusing that they made that movie from a 5 page short story.
:-)
Hey, "2001: A Space Odyssey" was made from a short story ("The Sentinel") that was only about five pages, maybe ten. They threw in a scene from another Clarke story, "Take A Deep Breath". (Guess which scene
(Mind, Clarke is (or was) a SCUBA diver, he should know better. (I.e. exhale, don't hold your breath, or you'll risk an embolism.)
Come to think of it, a lot of SF movies are based on short stories or novelettes, rather than full length novels. Too hard to do justice to the latter in the screen time available. "Dune" should have been a mini-series. (And not done by DeLaurentis).
Nah, emacs is for people who don't have the brain to learn more than one program.
:-)
(Starts donning asbestos underwear....)
Linux is free, remember? They can bundle Linux with Tivoli if folks want. Think of it as a very sophisticated runtime environment.
You're certainly not forcing people to buy it, so comparisons with a certain large Washington state software company are non sequitor.
I can somewhat understand why folks might put more restrictive licensing on documentation than code.
Documentation is easier to screw up -- it doesn't have to pass the objective 'machine test' of whether it will compile and run. And there's an old saying among writers: there is no greater urge than to modify somebody else's prose. Lot's of folks consider themselves writers who aren't. Far fewer consider themselves programmers who aren't, because the computer has a way of slapping you in the face with reality.
That said, however, I agree that there ought to be some way for folks other than the original copyright holder to add to/update documentation as the software changes. I suppose if nothing else the updates could be distributed as a 'patch' (sed script?) to the original, or as an errata sheet, although neither are very satisfactory. Especially after several generations of same.
If you're not already doing this... tape those shows!
We've got hours and hours worth of Sesame St, Bill Nye, Shelly T Turtle, Arthur, Magic Schoolbus, and yes, even some Barney. Our daughter (4-1/2) grew up on that stuff (plus Disney videos and a lot of being read to). Kids love to watch the same videos over and over (and over, and over...) again -- they pick up new things each time, and also gives them a feeling of mastery that they can "predict" what's going to happen next. (It's the same with favorite books.) We also found that, with my daugher anyway, they go through phases. For a few weeks all she watch was Arthur. Then just Magic Schoolbus. And so on. Then she'll rediscover something she hadn't watched in a long time.
My boys (twins, 8 months) aren't quite into any of that stuff yet. We have a couple of 'baby videos' -- music and shapes/toys/etc which help us keep our sanity at times. We do limit how much the kids watch TV, and we hardly watch it ourselves, but it has its uses.
Yes, Discovery, Learning Channel, A&E etc have a lot of good stuff, and we usually watch those in preference to PBS or (ugh) network TV in the evenings (with exceptions).
But for little kids, PBS rules. Sesame Street and stuff like Shelly T. Turtle kept our daughter (and now our boys) educated and entertained without constant commercial interruptions for the latest Mattel marvel or sugar frosted glucose cereal. Now she routinely watches Bill Nye the Science Guy and Magic Schoolbus.
Around here the local PBS stations also routinely broadcast more targeted educational stuff in the wee hours of the morning for teachers to tape and use in their classes.
Yeah, the libertarian in me says that shouldn't be paid for by unwilling taxpayers, but the concerned parent says "cool". And I do fork over some bucks come pledge season.
If PBS were to go subscription-only (via cable and satellite) I'd pay for it, but I like the idea that it's available to those that don't have access (for physcial or financial reasons) to cable or satellite - at least the educational kids programming.
Science fiction author Larry Niven, that is. Jerry Pournelle is fond of quoting it, and I've heard Niven himself say it a time or two:
"There is no cause so noble that it will not attract fuggheads."
Linux advocacy proves to be no exception.
The boycott is not just for selling a shoddy product -- there are (a very few) non Circuit City stores around here that sold DIVX and I don't particularly avoid them (besides, if I boycotted every store that ever sold a shoddy product I'd never buy anything) -- it's for designing the stupid thing and pushing it on an ignorant populace. Kind of like a large software company up in Redmond, only worse.
Oh, and as for folks looking for a bargain when they sell off DIVX player back stock, keep in mind that no DIVX player sold on or after today will ever play DIVX discs, because you won't be able to register it (see the news release). (Even if you bought one last week, if you haven't registered it yet you're SOL as far as DIVX discs go.) It'll still play DVDs, but poorly.
However, I still think the pricing model is a great idea. No more late fees...
The "great" pricing model just built the usual late fee (and then some) into the initial purchase price of the disc. Unless you're the type that routinely keeps rentals for a couple of weeks past due date, it doesn't win you much. If you usually return rentals on time (easy for me, I drop 'em off on the way to work), it penalizes you.
Around here I can rent two DVD's for a week for what a single DIVX would cost me for 48 hours. Worse than that, if you count mileage to the nearest Circuit City to buy the DIVX.
What DIVX offers is an improved rental model, where your trips to the video store are cut by more than half.
"Cut by more than half"? How do you figure that?
And in any case, it isn't necessarily true. There are far, far more video rental places than Circuit Sh.., er, Cities. When I return a video I just drop it off in the drive past drop-box, and the video store is on my way to work. No special trip involved. And the rental price is typically about half the price of a DIVX disc, which seems to have the late-return fee built in.
(Or I can rent a movie - VHS or DVD - at my local supermarket and return it next week when I'm back for next week's groceries. Only a buck for the tape, and the DVD rental is still cheaper than buying a DIVX.)
What were you doing in there supporting Circuit City anyway if you don't like DIVX?
This announcement is great -- I laugh, ha ha! -- but I'm still not planning on shopping at Circuit City. Not until July 1, 2001, anyway...
(As an ex-military associate of mine is fond of saying, "defeat is in the pursuit". Or as an ex-fighter pilot puts it "don't stop firing when you see smoke, follow him down to the ground". We want to make sure DIVX is not just dead, but is buried, with a large wooden stake through its heart and a bundle of garlic around its neck. To remind others who might come up with similar schemes.)
The significance of this cannot be overlooked. This is empirical proof that any system that places consumer property under the access control of a remote body can, will, and just did repossess control of those goods, despite the (promised!) expectations of the customer.
.doc format will be readable by anything else, do you?))
Does this remind you of anything? Like the provisions in the proposed revision to the Commercial Code (I forget the new acronym) that allows just that with software licensing?
What can we learn from this? SDMI--the MP3 competitor--is flat out doomed to fail if it attempts any sort of protection dependant on contacting anyone anywhere for permission to play a song
Here's hoping that also applies to software that tries to go the rental or time-expired licensing route, as is rumored for upcoming versions of MS Office. (Don't pay the monthly rental, and Word locks up on you. Holding not only your app, but your documents hostage. (You don't actually believe that the default
Beta sure seems more hyped now than it ever was when it was alive.
Yes, the original Beta was slightly (not "a LOT") better than VHS in terms of recording quality (resolution). But how good can you get when you're limited by composite NTSC anyway? VHS won out because (a) it was a more open standard (Beta was closely held by Sony), and (b) you could put a full length movie onto a single tape.
The Beta that is used in TV studios and commercial camcorders these days is Digital Beta. Same tape cassette mechanism but a totally different recording technique, and utterly incompatible with the old Beta tape decks. It's the digital aspect that gives it the higher resolution than the old 3/4" UMatic cassettes they used to use (and are still used somewhat).
Some security considerations, of course -- don't want the users changing the rules of the dungeon too much -- but it'd be cool if they could upload their own Java-based objects/modules/avatars/etc (using GetClassByName or whatever the API is) to alter (within bounds) the behaviour of the environment. This can go far beyond (possibly too far beyond) what any built-in scripting langage might be capable of, and saves you the trouble of writing one.
> without Gore [...]
Problem is, if that gets repeated enough even in jest, people are going to end up believing it.
Hell, it'd probably be horrifying to find out just how many people do believe it now (the ones that don't believe that Bill Gates/Microsoft invented the Internet.)
ONe, it doesn't have to be random noise. Oh, if you're using something as simple as XOR, maybe it does so that the output is non-obvious. But with only a slightly more sophisticated one-time-pad lookup it could be an actual music CD, not just noise. The advantage is lower-obviousness during a physical search. (Mind, if they're really serious and suspect this is the technique you're using, they'll try to decrypt against every CD in your collection.)
And you don't have to start with a new CD for each transmission, unless you're sending 650 MB at a shot. A single CD will cover a lot of message traffic. You just both (all involved) need to agree on which recording of which CD you're going to use.
(The traditional low-tech version of this is using an agreed-upon edition of a mass market book, "Catcher In The Rye", say.)
Hah. The AT&T Unix PC, thirteen years ago, had a built-in phone and telephony software. (There's a copy of the review of it I wrote for BYTE on my web page somewhere.)
The Unix PC had a lot of shortcomings (hey, what do you want for 1M of memory and a 10 MHz 68010?), but the Phone Manager software was actually pretty cool. A lot more could be done with today's technology, of course, especially with Caller-ID and other features not available back in the '80s. (And is being done on large Unix systems supporting customer service operations.)
I mean, if Brin can't be trusted to even get Anakin's age right (9 or 10, not 6), what can we trust him with?
Too many of Brin's comments had to do with Anakin being 6, when he's really 10. That may not seem like much of a difference in Brin's mind, but in the context it is quite significant. And consider that Anakin is quite above average intelligence (more than perhaps we can say for his son), the difference is more significant. A 10 year old with an IQ of 150 has a 'mental age' of 15.
Brin gets a lot of small things wrong too, and leaps to unwarranted assumptions. Young Anakin was friends with young Greedo? What, there's only one alien like that on all of Tatooine? Darth Vader toasts planets? Erm, that was Moff Tarkin that blew up Alderaan, not Vader.
Yes, that Yoda considers Anakin "too old" and yet doesn't put up much of a protest over training Luke was something many of us noticed. But again, consider context: In TPM the Jedi Knights are at their zenith and there are many of them. In ESB (and ROTJ) Luke is the only prospect left. Yoda isn't happy about it but what choices does he have? (As an aside, consider how long Jedi training must take if Obi-Wan started at a younger age than Anakin and is only now (in TPM) considered no longer an apprentice.)
Brin's had some odd ideas before. This review wasn't really worth the disk space.
I read the update. It makes things seem even worse, not better.
Without the clarification, we could at least hope that the MS crap would remain confined to the TV's proprietary JVM, and the open one would remain pretty much conformant to 100% Pure Java.
Now we see that the open version is being seduced to the "purloin and pervert" (embrace+extend) side of the force.
2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). [That's hardly cross-platform, then, is it?] If developers use Delegates [I don't recall those being part of standard Java] they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. [Which we need....why?] We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls.
[Oh, joy, more Win32 crAPIs. And they'll work just how on end-swapped or 64-bit word machines?]
The GPL'd Kaffe tree is about to become hopelessly contaminated. Somebody fork it now, please!
(sorry about the double post)
I read the update. It makes things seem even worse, not better.
Without the clarification, we could at least hope that the MS crap would remain confined to the TV's proprietary JVM, and the open one would remain pretty much conformant to 100% Pure Java.
Now we see that the open version is being seduced to the "purloin and pervert" (embrace+extend) side of the force.
2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). That's hardly cross-platform, then, is it? If developers use Delegates I don't recall those being part of standard Java they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. Which we need....why? We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls.
Oh, joy, more Win32 crAPIs. And they'll work just how on end-swapped or 64-bit word machines?
The GPL'd Kaffe tree is about to become hopelessly contaminated. Somebody fork it now, please!
The Kaffe that's already out there under GPL is available to anyone and will continue so. New versions don't have to be GPL'd, however.
Given the above concerns about Microsoft and Transvirtual, it may be time to fork the tree (or be ready to) and proceed with Open Kaffe (GNU Kaffe? some other name?) independantly of whatever MS/TV do.
Why is it such a bad thing to have pointers?
You answer your own question:
I understand how, when used wrong or poorly, they can lead to Bad Things
but in general I have found them very powerful elements of programming.
Do you consider all programmers as good as or better than you? If not, see above.
Half the programmers out there are below average.
(And that's assuming a uniform distribution. Some would probably say "more than half".)
"Java that will run only on Windows"
.kaf (or whatever) files too.
.java extension just to sow chaos and confusion, as part of their usual "purloin and pervert" (uh, "embrace and extend") tactics.)
An oxymoron. There's no such thing. If it only runs on Windows, then at best it's a "Java-like language". I wonder if the next "Explorer.Worm" targets
(Although MS will probably stick with the
Yeah. A while back I did some work for a large cable company -- a different sort of e-business, but still an e-business. Their system (customer info, billing, and digital settop box authorization) was based on Sun Enterprise servers, and the whole system was replicated in both Denver and Dallas via a T-3. You could nuke one data center and the overall system would stay up.
Much as I'd like to read the linked-to article, Microsoft's web site seems incapable of serving up a version of it that I can read in Netscape 3.01.
I get one window of text (along with the usual decorations) which is empty if I scroll down, and has vanished if I scroll back up. Fascinating. "View source" shows more JavaScript than actual document text...
No doubt it works just peachy in Internet Exploiter. But MS misses the first point of communication, which is to convey the message.
No wonder MS is losing.